ThriveNYC task farce

1-page mental ‘blueprint’

If the devil’s in these details, he’s going to be damned hard to find in this city initiative.

A year and a half after Mayor de Blasio convened a task force to produce a “blueprint” on mentalhealth crises, The Post has learned that the promised plan is nothing more than a onepage press release.

“I’m really astonished,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams told The Post. “Everybody should have something that we’re looking at so we can say, ‘We agree with this,’ and ‘We agree with that,’ otherwise we’re just flying blind.”

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said in April 2018 that the “task force would for the first time write the blueprint New York City needs to create a truly unified, proactive plan to provide help to those in need.”

Instead, on Monday, City Hall released a few bullet points in a press release about a $37 million initiative to have NYPD cops and civilian mental-health workers respond to 911 calls about emotionally disturbed people.

“How do you say you’re adopting recommendations for a report that no one has seen and the task force didn’t approve? That’s probably the worst way for the government to function,” Williams said.

When asked for more details about the plan, a ThriveNYC spokesman told The Post, “The city never committed to producing a physical report, but rather to develop new strategies.”

The strategies include putting “Co-Response Teams,” comprised of two cops and a counselor, in two “highneed” police precincts, in East Harlem and a northern part of The Bronx. The teams will end the current policy of sending just cops to respond to 911 calls about mentally ill individuals.

Williams called for the task force following fatal police shootings of at least 15 unhinged people since 2016.

Mark Griffith, director of the community group Brooklyn Movement Center, said even people involved in crafting the new policies weren’t notified about its conclusions.